Emir of Qatar reprimands Muslim Brotherhood's leaders in Doha for their 'failures' in Egypt.

Emir of Qatar reprimands Muslim Brotherhood's leaders in Doha for their 'failures' in Egypt.(Albawaba).


Doha - Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani met, on Wednesday, with a delegation of the Muslim Brotherhood leaders in Doha to review the group’s activities in Egypt, according to Al Manar Palestinian newspaper.

The meeting was attended by head of the Qatari Intelligence Agency and the Emir’s adviser who is responsible for communication with the Brotherhood.

Qatari sources said that the Emir has criticized the Brotherhood for their frequent failures in Egypt, threatening to stop financing the group unless they escalated their operations. The source revealed that Qatar finances terrorist cells in Egypt, mostly from the Brotherhood, and that Tamim was not satisfied with the group’s recent operations.

They pointed out that the Brotherhood cells in Libya and Sudan can no longer smuggle neither weapons nor ammunition into Egyptian territory, due to the strict security measures imposed by the Egyptian army on the borders with the two countries.

They added that Qatar cooperates with regional allies in attracting terrorist elements from the gangs of the Nusra Front, affiliated to Al-Qaeda, and the so-called Islamic State (IS) group, so as to send them to the Egyptian territory.

The Egyptian judiciary has banned the Brotherhood and ordered the freezing of the group's assets in September 2013, following the overthrow of former president Mohamed Morsi on 3 July 2013.

'Turkey’s Intel Agency MİT Helped Jihadists Kidnap Foreigners In Syria.': Stockholm Center of Freedom.

'Turkey’s Intel Agency MİT Helped Jihadists Kidnap Foreigners In Syria.': Stockholm Center of Freedom. (Stockholmcf).

A Turkish al-Qaeda militant who had been involved in kidnapping for a ransom to raise revenue for the radical armed group was saved by the government of Turkey’s autocratic President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan who hushed up the probe, thwarted the trial hearings and eventually secured the release of all suspects from prison.

The operative’s name is Orhan Yaşar, 43 year old (DOB: July 11, 1974) from the the Suruç district of Turkey’s southeastern province Şanlıurfa on Turkish Syrian border. He was involved in the scheme of kidnapping and later the release of Turkish photo-journalist Bünyamin Aygün of Milliyet daily from his captives in al-Qaeda affiliated armed group in Syria. Yaşar had been probed as part of the confidential investigation file No. 2012/1361 which was launched by the Office of the Public Prosecutor in the Eastern province Van in 2012.

Yaşar was detained in a sweeping al-Qaeda operation on January 14, 2014 and formally arrested few days later. He and other suspects in the case were indicted on July 2014. But Yaşar was released pending a trial on the first hearing in the case by Van No.3 High Criminal Court on August 6, 2014. 

The release of Yaşar did not make a sense at all given the fact one of the wiretap evidence in the case file revealed how he and his al-Qaeda cell leader was tipped off about the ongoing probe and planning to flee Turkey before police detained them on January 2014. Most likely the MİT learned about the police investigation file and passed that info to al-Qaeda suspects. As soon as the prosecutor was alerted by the investigators that suspects were made aware of the probe, he ordered their detention before they could have escaped the country.

There are five wiretap recordings in the investigation file that revealed how Yaşar involved in abduction of foreign nationals by al-Qaeda affiliated Jihadist groups in Syria.

The case file includes a wiretap recording that shows Yaşar was discussing the kidnapped Turkish photo-journalist Bünyamin Aygün, and Spanish correspondent Javier Espinosa and Spanish freelance photographer Ricardo Garcia Vilanova. Aygün was kidnapped on Nov.26, 2013 while Spanish journalists were kidnapped on Sept.16, 2013. Yaşar was urging his contact to locate these journalists, and ask for a ransom money from their families. “Without taking any [ransom] money, do not release him [Aygün],” Yaşar was recorded as saying according to the investigation file submitted to the court.

All three journalists were eventually released from captivity but there was no mention of any ransom money was paid in exchange of their freedom. When asked about that, Aygün simply said he had no knowledge of such transaction. The interesting part of his kidnapping is that Turkish media reported that MİT teams helped secure his release and took him back to Turkey.

The controversial charity group International Humanitarian Relief (IHH), accused by Russia at the UN Security Council for smuggling arms to rebels in Syria, was also involved in negotiations for Aygün’s release. In other words, while MİT had been helping Jihadists to organize kidnapping, ransom demanding and even killing hostages, it was also brokering the release of hostages to save the day and appear as a hero at the same time.

If the MİT was helping Jihadist groups to arm, fund and resupply themselves as the evidence in the prosecutor’s confidential file suggests, it should not come as a surprise that these hostages were easily picked up from the hands of Jihadist groups. Read the full story here.

PACE: "Turkey reintroducing the death penalty ‘incompatible’ with Council of Europe membership."

PACE: "Turkey reintroducing the death penalty ‘incompatible’ with Council of Europe membership."(PACE).

“President Erdogan is reported to be considering a referendum on the issue of bringing back the death penalty in Turkey,” said Yves Cruchten (Luxembourg, SOC), General Rapporteur on abolition of the death penalty for the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE).

“I would like to recall that that no executions are currently carried out in the 47 member states of the Council of Europe. Rejection of capital punishment is a basic principle of our organisation,” he pointed out.

“PACE has helped turn Europe into a death penalty free continent, by making a moratorium on executions and a commitment to abolition a condition for accession. The Assembly will not accept any backsliding on this. 

President Erdogan should be under no illusion: reintroducing the death penalty would be simply incompatible with Turkey’s continued membership of the Council of Europe.”

Full statement on Turkey's Referendum by CoE Assembly: "The legal framework was inadequate for the holding of a genuinely democratic process."

Full statement on Turkey's Referendum by CoE Assembly: "The legal framework was inadequate for the holding of a genuinely democratic process.". (CoE).

The 16 April constitutional referendum in Turkey was contested on an unlevel playing field, and the two sides in the campaign did not have equal opportunities, the international observers concluded in a statement released today. While the technical aspects of the process were well administered, voters were not provided with impartial information about key aspects of the reform, and limitations on fundamental freedoms had a negative effect, the statement says.

“On referendum day there were no major problems, except in some regions, however we can only regret the absence of civil society observers in polling stations,” said Cezar Florin Preda, Head of the delegation from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. “In general, the referendum did not live up to Council of Europe standards. The legal framework was inadequate for the holding of a genuinely democratic process.”

“The referendum took place in a political environment in which fundamental freedoms essential to a genuinely democratic process were curtailed under the state of emergency, and the two sides did not have equal opportunities to make their case to the voters,” said Tana de Zulueta, Head of the ODIHR limited election observation mission. “Our monitoring showed the ‘Yes’ campaign dominated the media coverage and this, along with restrictions on the media, the arrests of journalists and the closure of media outlets, reduced voters’ access to a plurality of views.”

Although the Supreme Board of Elections (SBE) adopted regulations and instructions to address some aspects of the process, the legal framework, which is focused on elections, remained inadequate for the holding of a genuinely democratic referendum, the observers said. Provincial governors used state-of-emergency powers to further restrict the freedom of assembly and expression.

“A state of emergency should never be used to undermine the rule of law,” Preda said.

The legal framework for the referendum neither sufficiently provides for impartial coverage nor guarantees eligible political parties equal access to public media, and gives preference to the ruling party and the president in the allocation of free airtime, while the SBE’s authority to sanction for biased coverage was repealed, the statement says.

The law limits full participation in the referendum to eligible political parties and does not regulate the involvement of other stakeholders, the statement says. Further, the SBE decided that civil society organisations and professional associations were not permitted to hold campaign events.

“The campaign framework was restrictive and the campaign imbalanced due to the active involvement of several leading national officials, as well as many local public officials, in the ‘Yes’ campaign,” de Zulueta said. “We observed the misuse of state resources, as well as the obstruction of ‘No’ campaign events. The campaign rhetoric was tarnished by some senior officials equating ‘No’ supporters with terrorist sympathizers, and in numerous cases ‘No’ supporters faced police interventions and violent scuffles at their events.”

Referendum day proceeded in an orderly and efficient manner in the limited number of polling stations visited by international observers. In some cases, access for ODIHR observers during the opening and voting in polling stations was either denied or limited. Police presence was widely reported both in and outside polling station and, in some cases, police were checking voters’ identification documents before granting access to the polls. The SBE issued instructions late in the day that significantly changed the ballot validity criteria, undermining an important safeguard and contradicting the law.

For further information contact:

Thomas Rymer, ODIHR, +90 535 891 9998 or +48 609 522 266, thomas.rymer@odihr.pl

Nathalie Bargellini, PACE, +90 544 781 49 74 or +33 6 65 40 32 82, nathalie.bargellini@coe.int